USS California (CGN-36)
USS California (CGN-36), the lead ship of her class of nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser, was the seventh ship of the United States Navy to be named for the 31st state. The contract to build her was awarded to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Newport News, Virginia on 13 June 1968 and her keel was laid down on 23 January 1970. She was launched on 22 September 1971 sponsored with a "near miss" of the champagne bottle by First Lady of the United States Patricia Nixon, and commissioned on 16 February 1974, with Captain Floyd H. Miller, Jr., in command. She was commissioned as a frigate (DLGN); her designation was changed to cruiser (CGN) on 30 June 1975. She was known as the "Golden Grizzly," commemorating the California Gold Rush and the grizzly bear appearing on the California state flag. She represented the United States Navy in the 1977 Silver Jubilee naval review in Portsmouth, honoring Queen Elizabeth II. In 1980, she circumnavigated the globe, the first nuclear-powered warship to do so since the USS Enterprise task force in 1964. Decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 9 July 1999, California entered the Nuclear Powered Ship-Submarine recycling program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on 1 October 1998. Her reactors were removed in early 2001, but recycling is continuing as of 2005. Author J. Lanier Yeates served aboard the USS California in 1974 and 1998. In 2005, he wrote Bay of One Hundred Fires, an alternative history novel in which the California is overhauled and upgraded, and plays a key role in fighting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who has, at least in the book, created a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. See USS California for other ships of the same name.
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